A Step By Step Guide to Redesigning a Website Without Affecting SEO

One of the things that most people wrongly believe is that once you have done SEO for your website that you don’t need to do it again. Well, this is wrong and this is not at all the case. There are plenty of factions that end up being altered when the site is redesigned, including the pages and codes. This means that if you don’t handle the SEO for these changes properly, then it can have a negative impact on the SEO of the site and the growth in the long run. However, if you redo it properly, then you can see an increase of strength in the SEO for your site.

Knowing what you should do after you have redesigned your site is important since it can have a dramatic effect on the ranking. Here is all that you need to know about redesigning your website as well as the SEO for the best results and how to figure out if it worked. There are plenty of steps that you would have to follow, so here is everything that you should know.

1. Old Pages on Website –

The first thing that needs to be done is for you to download the structure of the old URL of your site. The redesign means that not only will the site change, but also the structure of the URL. You should back it up so that you don’t see any effects on your ranking. You can use a plugin to download the structure and then update it after the changes are made. This will help you to ensure that the old site’s structure will be there so that you can compare it to the new structure, which will help you to make the necessary changes. It can also help to ensure that you aren’t forgetting any of the content that was already there or that you aren’t duplicating a page that was already created. This is the most critical step since you don’t want to lose this information when you start the work.

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2. Use a temporary URL –

You need to be using a temporary URL when it comes to redesigning the site. You should never use your real URL when it comes to making changes since it can cause problems for the visitors as well as other issues later. You want to ensure that your old site will still be working so that viewers can get in touch with you. Also, it isn’t a good business practice to have them see the site that you are building, so make sure that you are using a URL that is temporary. Once you have completed the redesign of the site, then you can simply change the URL to the permanent one and delete the temporary one. This is the easiest way that you can make the changes without affecting your current URL or your website and avoid any and all downtime as well that will affect your business and your customers.

3. Testing –

You need to do stringent testing on the new website to make sure that everything works properly. You should be checking for a wide variety of things, such as CSS, features and even broken links. Making sure that you undertake the testing is extremely important since you would be able to see if there are any problems before you set the site to launch. You need to visit it and think of it as if you were the viewer and see if everything flows smoothly and that you can find everything that you need. This is extremely critical because launching a broken site or one that doesn’t flow smoothly is going to be an eyesore and would cause problems for your business as well as your site. This should be done by a few people so that they can spot problems and issues that others might not, which can be in the design, the content, the pages and much more.

4. Correct 301 Redirects –

The next thing that you should be doing is a 301 direct from your old URL to the new URL. This will ensure that both the old and new URL for the same page work and will direct all of the traffic to the same pages. You want the viewer to be able to use the links that they already know or even the new ones that will take them to the same page without any issues. This is something that you should have the experts do so that they can make sure that all of the pages match. Before you launch anything, you should be checking that all of the URLs from the old page and the new site match up and that they take you to the same location. This is something that you should do for all pages, no matter how many there are.

5. Use the new site –

When you have finished all of the testings and have done the 301 directs, then you can launch your new site. If your site is large, then you might want to do the launching in steps rather than all at once. The new site should be launched with fanfare so that the viewer and potential customers know that you are setting out a new site. You might want to ensure that you are doing this on a particular date that has special meaning to the company or any weekday since those are the day’s people are more likely to view the site. It is important that you launch the site in a manner that will keep it from crashing, especially if you have plenty of viewers that come and view it. Go ahead and think about when you want to do this and how you plan on doing it as well before you make any final plans.

6. Use the tools from Google Webmaster –

If you want to make sure that all of the work that you are doing so far has been successful, then you should think about using the tools from Google Webmaster. It will help you to ensure that there aren’t any URLs that are broken, which will allow you to fix them if there are any. You need to ensure that you are using the latest tools so that you can find any links that are broken before the launch date. Using the tools from Google’s Webmaster sector will make this job easier for you since you simply need to input the information and all of the details will come back to you. It is very important that you make sure that all of your links and URLs are fully working to avoid problems for your customers and so that you can fix it before you have fully launched the site to the public.

7. Check verification status –

When the website is being redone most often the developers would stop the crawling from the search engines. You would have to check the status of the crawler and if it is stopped, then start it again. This is important since you need to ensure that all of the search engines are aware that your new site is back up and running. If you want to get to the top of the ranks, then you should ensure that you have all of the required details given to the crawler so that it can bring up the new site rather than the old one. Simply follow the steps that are given at the Google site and then do a few searches of your own through IP addresses that aren’t connected to the site. This is vital since you want to make sure that you aren’t getting left off the search results after you deactivated your earlier site.

Also, Read – Google Has Canceled Support For Robots.Txt Noindex

8. Check your robot.txt file –

Another thing that you need to make sure that you are checking after you have completely redesigned your site is that your robot.txt file isn’t corrupt. You can check this under the crawling tool after you have done the verification. This is important since this is where all of the instructions are given to the crawler and which pages they should crawl. You want to ensure that this is updated after the new URL has been changed so that the new links are there rather than the old ones. This is typically done by the webmaster, so make sure that you check it and have it updated. It isn’t necessary for all of your pages on the site to be crawled and the experts can make sure that only the required ones are checked with this small script, so make sure to update it after you have finished the redesign.

9. Submission of sitemap –

Since there would be a newly modified structure for your website you would need to submit the new sitemap and the XML to both Bing and Google. Once this step is done, then the crawling would be resumed on your page quickly. This is another way that you can help to determine which of the pages from your website will be searched by the search engines. You need to use a Google-based tool or another 3^rd party one to help you with this and can also do it manually. You should make sure that you are checking the entire sitemap with a testing tool and then adding it to your robot.txt file. There are some limitations that you should know and it shouldn’t be larger than 50,000 URLs or 50MB when uncompressed and if it is larger, then numerous sitemaps will have to be created for it to work properly.

10. Monitor all changes –

You should make sure that you are monitoring all changes and that you are keeping an eye out for all new growth. Also, keep track of the keyword rankings that you are using on your site, which can be done using some of the best tools for SEO. If there is a huge change in the SEO of your site, then you should work at understanding why it happened and, if required, how you can fix it. The monitoring should be done for around 2-3 months to determine if your ranking is increasing or decreasing.

Conclusion –

It is important that you know how to keep your SEO functional after your site is completely redone. You should make sure that you are following all of these steps to keep your website from losing the ranking that it had. You also want to make sure that you are monitoring the site and the results after this are done so that you can fix any problems before it gets worse. You can take help from professional web designing Company for redesigning a website.

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